The evil cackling you hear in the background is me thinking about how many harmless people could be locked away for up to three years if Nick Xenophon’s proposed legislation, with laudable aims, gets through. Ain’t I a nice guy giving losers the chance to raise their concerns to government, and maybe keep their loser activities from becoming criminal?

As a hypothetical, let’s say that anti-discrimination laws allow discrimination by certain organizations based on the nature of the organization, such as religious institutions, including schools, wanting to be able to employ only those (whether as teachers, janitors or receptionists) of the same sect.

Then we invite the Education Minister to an interview:

Interviewer: Minister, how important do you think it is that children in our education system are not only given basic facts, but are provided with the skills to develop questions and hypotheses, analyze information, and come to the best conclusions based on the information available to them?

44(2): A body piercer must not perform body piercing on the genitalia, anal region, perineum or nipples of a person under the age of 18 years, whether or not consent has been given to the body piercing.

It’s worth noting that the Current Issues Brief No. 3, 2008 from the Research Service of the Victorian Parliament discusses the Victorian bill, and regulations in other Australian jurisdictions, the paper does not even contain the word circumcision.

Like this:

You’ve only got until the close-of-business tomorrow (2009-03-25) to get your submission in on the Carbon Polluter Rewards Scheme. I got mine in today.

As you can see from the submission list form letters are squashed together… and are labelled as such, discounting somewhat the impression they will make on senators.

It’s worth reading Josh Gan’s submission, there are only 16 published so far (and many from self-serving types who pay only lip-service to the problem of climate change) if you get a chance before sending your own submission to economics.sen@aph.gov.au – it need only be a paragraph or two outlining what you think really needs attention with the CPRS legislation – probably on the free rewards permits to polluters.

It is also worth looking at the Australian Law Reform Commission’s submission (Sub 18), which was pretty much "we had this inquiry in 2004, nothing was done, we still say the same things, so get off your loathsome spotty behinds and DO something this time."

I was happy that I stressed that specific legislation and regulations could be counterproductive in the future, as no other published versions (I didn’t refer to them until after I wrote mine) mentioned this, although a later one did, and much better than I. I also think I was the only person to suggest crowd-sourcing the scientific community to reject intellectual property claims that were really discoveries or prior art.

Anyway… my submission is over the fold (with a touch of reformatting…. no spelling errors changed) or you can pull down my PDF which is a bit prettier.

Even the Greens’ dissenting report was quite good… better than their usual set of platitudes with little analysis.

Still, I wish the Dems were still in parliament… their forensic skills are sorely missed.

The only brownie point to Rudd for the majority view is that while it was self-congratulatory and somewhat selective in it’s quoting from the submissions it did quote (especially selective with Saul Eslake’s submission, which was quite scathing as I reported yesterday), at least it wasn’t as idiotic as the section from the Coalition.

The ALRC has been a lot smarter than Conroy: even if you aren’t interested in this particular consultation, it is well worth while browsing around the site if you are interested in how any consultation could be organized.

It legislates for recognition and use of the Red Crystal, a.k.a. the "Third Protocol Emblem of the Geneva Convention".

The Red Crystal Debate stems from the offence some take from the Red Cross and the Red Crescent, the barely-understood Red Lion, as well as the totally unrecognized Red Star of David that Israel insists upon.

I hope it’s not because it’s a private member’s bill from a Liberal Party member.

I hope it’s not because Brumby’s North-South pipeline would probably be blocked by this bill, a pipeline with massive bipartisan public condemnation (especially from Goulburn and Murray catchment areas), where expected scathing criticism in submissions, and passage of the bill, would leave either or both federal and state ALP governments red-faced.